How To Bring Your Love Life Back From The Dead

by Wendy Sparrow

  “That…,” he said.

  “That,” she agreed, even if she wasn’t sure she knew what she was agreeing to. That had been amazing for being accidental and short, and she needed more. A lot more. She slipped her hands into his hair and pulled his mouth against hers. She could hear an actor getting fake electric shock therapy in another room and see the flashing lights that accompanied it. In this hallway, it was electric too. Her veins felt like they were conducting electricity from the hot connection of their lips. It wasn’t meant to feel this good. It was too sudden and too magical, so she doubted it could last. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to be afraid of being rejected. She was going to be bold.

  She opened her mouth to his, and his tongue swept against hers, teasing and tasting. His hands slid down her sides and along her back and brought her closer.

  Mmm. So good. So very good.

  His arms tightened.

  Then, a group of teenage girls bumped into them with screams and apologies as they moved on.

  Their lips parted, and they stared at each other. He was breathing as quickly as her. She tried not to be obvious about it, tried not to gulp in breaths. Her heart was pounding—hammering against her ribcage more than it had this entire spooky time. Even the zombies in the graveyard hadn’t quickened her pulse to this pace.

  She felt alive.

  Wow.

  “This is crazy,” she said.

  “It is crazy…so by your rules, that means it’s not.”

  “I guess not.”

  They finished the remainder of the house, but her heightened awareness of him left her in a daze. Actors jumping out at her received a very delayed reaction. Her brain was going ninety miles per hour along with her heart. We kissed. We kissed, and it was amazing. This was amazing. It was everything I’ve ever wanted. My twenty-one year old version of me was right.

  The thirty-one year old kept trying to stall her, to delay her from putting her whole heart on the line. It’s crazy. It’s too soon. There has to be something wrong with him. There has to be. He is too good to be true.

  “Can I ask you something?” They were outside the haunted house and walking side-by-side, really close. That was something. You could always measure attraction with proximity. He’d been quiet, but he hadn’t pulled away. And he might be thinking about that kiss too. That’s why he wasn’t talking. If you were close to someone, the silences were never awkward.

  “Sure,” he said.

  “I have this party with friends on Halloween. I was wondering if you’d go as my date.”

  He hesitated, but then smiled. “Is it a costume party?”

  Oh, that’s why he hadn’t agreed right away. For one awful second, she thought he was going to say no. Maybe this whole night, she’d been wrong about him, and he wasn’t as interested in her as she was in him. It was stupid to think that. He’d been just as into that kiss as she had been, and there was the proximity thing. No, he was definitely interested.

  “Some people wear costumes, but we wouldn’t have to if you’re absolutely against them.”

  “I’m not. I’ll go with you. Were you really going as a zombie?”

  “I was thinking maybe I would. It seems easy enough. I’m not big into huge, elaborate costumes.”

  “Okay.”

  This night was perfect. It was as if nothing could go wrong—which was terrifying—this was usually when the bottom dropped out, when she found out that she shouldn’t trust her heart because she attracted insane men. He was too good, too nice. This date had been too magical. It was all “too” much.

  It would happen anytime now.

  Anytime.

  Daniel slid his hand into hers and smiled down at her. Or not. Maybe not.

  Standing in front of the door, Daniel got his key out, but he stopped with it in the keyhole. “I need to tell you something, Lauren.”

  She’d been at his side, joking about walking him to his door, but at this, her heart sank, and she took a few steps back. “You know, there are no conversations starting with those words that are good news.” No, this had happened before. She got all excited about a guy—to the point that he seemed almost superhuman in her eyes, and then he proved without a doubt, he was most definitely human. Never to this degree of course, but that should have told her the end would be a harder fall. “Please tell me that you’re not married.”

  “Well, that’s part of it, but….” He grabbed for her hand as she backed up, but she danced out of reach, holding her hands up.

  It hurt so bad it stole her breath. “No. No. No. No. I should be put in a psychiatric program for women who are psychotically bad at picking men.” What was in her profile on the dating site that only attracted crazy men? She dug through her purse for her keys.

  “No, I’m not married. Not anymore.”

  She froze in the act of hunting for the keys which seemed to have dropped to the bottom of her bag. “What does not anymore mean?”

  “I was married, but she died…two years ago. She’d had a heart condition her whole life, and it was expected, but.… I just….” He dragged a hand down his face. “You were my first attempt at dating again, and Nadia would have wanted me to start dating. I thought I was ready.”

  She hurt worse than moments ago when she’d thought he wanted her, but he was married and having a conscience attack. Now, he was being noble even though he was available, and it stung like hell, but how could she ask a widower to jump back into dating if he wasn’t ready?

  “But you’re not ready?”

  “I don’t know. I expected to know—to feel right.”

  Oh, ugh. She felt so sick. She could hurl right at his feet. All the warmth everywhere in her body seemed to have seeped out. He hadn’t been interested in her—at least not to the degree she had been. It had felt completely right to her. It had felt so right.

  Instead Daniel was thinking about how much he missed his dead wife.

  Why was this happening? What had she ever done to deserve this?

  Her hands closed around her keys, and she nearly wept with relief. She had to get out of here. Now. No, two seconds ago. She was going to hurl. She was going to cry. She was going to really regret being bold and putting her heart out there.

  “I have to go. I can’t be here—in this moment. I can’t be here right now.” In two seconds, she’d start crying from disappointment, and she didn’t want him to see that. He hadn’t done anything wrong. Not really. He’d tried to get back into dating…and she’d failed—somehow she’d failed. She didn’t meet expectations. She wasn’t worth it.

  “Lauren…look…I thought you should know. I didn’t mean to… I just…thought you should know.” He was sweet and sensitive, and he belonged to a dead woman, and he was letting her down nicely. She’d never lost out to the deceased before…Jerry, sure, but not someone dead.

  Nodding in huge bobs of her head, she turned and nearly ran for her car, calling over her shoulder, “Thanks. Goodnight.”

  “Lauren,” he called after her.

  “I have to go. I can’t… I can’t…,” she said, getting into her car. This second. This moment. This ugly, ugly moment should die in a fire, and karma was horrifically cruel for letting her hope.

  She walked into her house a few minutes later. The urge to cry had passed. Now, she felt frozen. The shock of going from the best date of her life to her most doomed one had left her as weak as a marathon run. She wanted to drop to the floor and stare at her ceiling. Instead, she collapsed onto her couch, right beside her list. That stupid, stupid list. What did twenty-one year old Lauren know about the real world? There was a reason Daniel was single and as amazing as he was. He hadn’t been single that long.

  Ugh. More than anything, she wished she’d borrowed that stupid magazine from the library so she could throw it against the wall—hard. Or set it on fire and pay the fine. Whatever the fine was for setting library materials on fire, it was a damn bargain. She might go to the library on Monday to ask about the fine and the
n borrow it. Though it was unlikely they’d let her borrow anything if she mentioned her bonfire idea.

  Still, what ass wrote that article?

  Don’t be afraid of rejection?

  Rejection hurt.

  Rejection sucked.

  She was never going to put herself out there so she could be rejected again—that was the plan for the night—no for forever. Even if, at some future date, she talked herself out of this plan, for right now, it was a brilliant plan. It was all about self-preservation. This sort of hurt could kill a girl. That cut from this morning hadn’t hurt one-tenth this bad. Having a stake hammered into her heart would sting less than this. She assumed.

  Hell. When Lauren closed her eyes, she could almost feel his arms around her again, and she could smell his cologne. Her coat smelled like she’d been rubbing up against him—which she had been.

  She was never going to be bold again. No way.

  Her phone lit up with a text.

  I’m sorry. I should have told you from the beginning. I’m sorry.

  There wasn’t any talk of seeing each other again or wanting to work it out. She wanted to try. Maybe they needed more time. Maybe if he got to know her, he’d see she was worth the risk.

  So, she waited.

  A minute passed.

  Another.

  No, that was it. He’d said what he’d wanted to.

  Over. Done. That was it. She fought the urge to throw her phone and forced herself to set it gently to the side of the couch.

  She’d never felt like that with anyone—so it figured with her luck that she wasn’t the first one to feel it with him. He might have been thinking of his first wife the entire time. Maybe he’d even felt guilty for being with her. And, all that time, she’d been giddy with how perfect and lovely it all was. The first tear streaked down her right cheek before she leaned back and let them dribble down her face.

  In her head, she swore she could hear a grave digger shoveling dirt onto a coffin. Thud. Thud. Here lies Lauren’s tragic love life. May it rest in peace.

  The next day was Sunday, and she’d promised to eat dinner with her sister’s family. They were going to carve the pumpkins she’d gotten with her nieces the previous day. Her sister enjoyed prying into other’s personal lives like most people enjoyed eating, so it was no surprise when Megan said, “So, the girls said you hung out at the pumpkin patch with a guy and his nephews. They said they saw you holding hands.” They’d been setting the table for dinner, but Megan would have ambushed her at some point, so avoiding her was pointless.

  Lauren winced. “Not a good topic.” In fact, any topic would have been less painful. Getting decapitated would be less painful. One good whack, and you were done, and you never had to think about how you’d grabbed some guy after an accidental brush of the lips and plastered yourself against him. If she could volunteer for a decapitation right this moment, she would.

  “Why? Lauren, I know you like to go slow, but the girls said they really liked him. They said you seemed to like him too.”

  “I did. I mean, I do. It’s just complicated.”

  “Like…what kind of complicated?”

  Lauren sighed. “Like his wife died two years ago, and he’s not sure he wants to be with anyone or even date yet kind of complicated.”

  Her sister went absolutely and completely still. “Wow,” she said finally.

  “Tell me about it,” Lauren said, dropping down into one of the chairs around the dining table. “I’ve dated guys with baggage, but nothing like this.” She threw her hands up in the air. “I mean, how do you compete with someone who is dead? Besides, he didn’t ask me to.” Not one word. No more texts. No phone call she could let go to voicemail. Nothing. He was done. And he’d basically apologized for their date. Even Jerry hadn’t been that cruel.

  “I’m sorry,” her sister whispered.

  “Yeah, me too. I thought I’d finally found…the one. You know how it was with you and Eric when you first met? That’s how I felt for a golden shining moment and then he told me that, and I left. I practically ran. I had no idea how to handle someone telling me that.” It was just as well she hadn’t stayed. What else could he have said that would make this sting less? Nothing. He might have even gone on and told her more about his wife. And then she would have known how she didn’t measure up. That would have been really bad. No. Going home and crying her eyes out before eating a load of pumpkin chocolate chip cookies had been a good call.

  Self-preservation. She was all about self-preservation.

  Her sister was still staring at her. “Are you sure he was telling you that he didn’t want to see you anymore?”

  “No, I don’t know why he was telling me. He mentioned he wasn’t sure if he was ready. I waited for him to ask me to give him time or to slow down—he didn’t ask me either of those things. I didn’t know what to do—so I ran. I bolted out of there.”

  “That was last night?”

  “Yep.”

  “Has he called or emailed today?”

  “He texted me last night saying he was sorry and that he should have told me from the beginning, but not anything about wanting to see me again. I was totally into him, Megan. I practically poured myself on him at the haunted house. He was probably thinking the whole time, “I wish she wasn’t draping herself across me.””

  “He wasn’t thinking that,” Megan said, rolling her eyes.

  “He was.” Lauren dropped her head into her hands. “I’ve never felt like this much of an idiot. I grabbed him and kissed him, and he was hoping I’d just stop. I asked him out—he probably went out with me out of pity because I was throwing myself at him. All night I was throwing myself at him. I nearly drowned him in attention. He probably hates me.”

  “He doesn’t hate you.”

  “He might.”

  “You’re being ridiculous.”

  “No, you’re being ridiculous!” When her sister didn’t answer right away, Lauren looked up.

  Megan was standing there with her arms folded and an amused look on her face. “You get one ranting statement for free since clearly you’ve had a rough time, but I think you’re wrong about this guy. He just needs time to figure out what he wants.”

  “Well, that doesn’t help. There’s a good chance he doesn’t want me.” Besides, he’d had time. He’d had plenty of time.

  Her phone buzzed with a text, and she pulled it out. It almost made her smile, but she still felt too hopeless to smile. Self-preservation. Eyes open. No more giddy twenty-one year old Lauren calling the shots. She would remain…hopeless. Her love life was still dead. Very dead.

  “What?”

  “He wants to know if he can call me later—to talk.”

  “See! That’s a good sign.”

  “Maybe.” Her hopes had crashed pretty spectacularly last night. She was not getting them up. At all. She’d squash them down periodically just to be sure. She texted back a simple, “Yes.” That was cool and not at all pathetic.

  Lauren bounced a knee and drummed her fingers on the table. When was “later” anyway? Maybe she should ask Eric what “later” meant to a guy.

  “You’re going to be useless at carving pumpkins,” her sister observed, bringing food out to the table.

  “Possibly. I’m just here to applaud efforts anyway, though.”

  “You’re here to scoop out the guts. None of the rest of us will do that.”

  Lauren sighed. “Fine. I guess there’s some joy in knowing you’ll always be needed at Halloween.”

  Megan patted her on the head. “That’s the spirit.”

  She doubted it—she really did.

  He called as she stepped in the door after getting back from her sister’s.

  “Hello?”

  “Is this a good time?” He sounded nervous. That was good. He wouldn’t sound nervous if he was hoping to stomp on her heart.

  “Yes, this is fine. I just got home from carving pumpkins with my nieces. One of them carved a Jaws’ shark, a
nd the other carved a face with a knife sticking out its forehead—she kept some of the guts to leave around the scene of the crime. I was really proud.”

  “You should be.” His voice was more relaxed. Maybe he’d assumed she was going to fall to pieces, burst into tears, and hang up the phone.

  She still might, depending on what he said.

  In fact, he had to make a quick recovery. After five minutes, thirty-one year old Lauren was sealing the coffin on this relationship and writing it off as dead-on-arrival. Self-preservation.

  “So?” she asked finally when the silence between them dragged on.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you from the beginning. I kept waiting for that perfect moment, but there didn’t seem to be one.”

  “It’s okay. I understand that.” And she did. There hadn’t really been a time where it would have made sense for him to mention a late wife. She hadn’t brought up any of her past relationships. Well, other than hair shirt guy…and Roger…and Jerry. A previous marriage was a big deal. On the other hand, she wasn’t sure if he was calling to apologize or explain, or more. Hopefully more. But hope was still on probation. “It’s just…why are you calling me?”

  He sighed. “I don’t know. I probably should know, shouldn’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  Neither of them spoke, and she shifted anxiously…and waited…and waited…and….

  No. And hell no.

  This last decade should give her some edge over that romantic idealist version of her. And she deserved a clear in or out from him. Yes or no.

  “Look, Daniel, I can’t leave my heart out for you to decide if you’re interested. If it’s not the right time for you, that’s fine. If you’re not interested in me, that’s fine. Waiting around for you to decide on either of those things just plain sucks.” And none of it was fine, but she’d force it to be fine, or she’d keep saying it was fine until one of them believed her.

  “No, I am interested, and I think that’s part of it.” He sighed. “I feel like a horrible person saying this out loud. I feel more strongly about you than I did for Nadia, but I also knew Nadia wasn’t going to live forever. I wonder if I held back with her—and now it’s too late.”